This is our first podcast — we have several more in the hopper, recording more nearly every Saturday.

This is the first of many podcasts. Please pay attention to the humor between Josh and I. Josh Kent is the author “The Witch at Sparrow Creek,” a great guy and a great friend.

Elitism is a special breed of arrogance and can be found even in anti-intellectual circles. And I want to really parse what I mean by anti-intellectual. This is the type that eschews any knowledge that is received via education. This is not about believing one thing or the other, but about rejecting thoughts, ideas, facts simply because they come from a lettered individual. Elitism is a smugness wherein the person believes he or she has all the knowledge that is needed because they are somehow super-learned.

I could go on, but I want to leave it there. Enjoy the podcast

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future topics, let me know.

So will the exorcism podcast be a live exorcism, and if so, will it use the proper Roman Ritual in all of it’s glorious Latin, or some cheap facsimile? But seriously, this is good stuff man. Keep it up.

What proportion of the world’s population throughout time has experienced first hand miraculous events involving major hearings (limbs restored), major nature miracles (walking on water, parting a sea), resurrections and such?

Everyone else is simply getting second hand information or claiming alleged miracles of a far less substantive nature.

Lourdes, the greatest healing site in Catholicism that attracts hundreds of thousands if not a million or more pilgrims each year has about 50 cures that a formal investigative team formed by the church has claimed to be miracles. And none of them involve limbs regrowing.

As for cancers, scientists know that a small percentage of fatal tumors vanish on their own no matter the patient’s religion or lack thereof. It just happens on a small percentage basis with about the same annual average. And small as that average is, it exceeds the percentage of cures that Catholic physicians say has taken place at Lourdes.

If miracles can happen, so can tall tales driven by ignorance, enthusiasm, missionary zeal, or driven by the need to compete with rival beliefs, etc.

Exorcisms are a case in point. Sociologists point out that societies that have been colonized by unwanted rulers can sometimes internalize that evil and blame themselves, and seek to rid themselves of internally imagined evil demons that are plaguing them. The desired revolution against external oppressors mirrors a desire to free one’s self or one’s people from internal oppressors. War against Rome also becomes war against demons.

New religions also seek to purge themselves from the older religion they are seeking to supersede, hence in the fourth Gospel Jesus is depicted as calling the Jews sons of the devil for rejecting his new teachings, his new rule/s.

And early Christians viewed the Hellenistic religions as demonic, and sought every means to defeat Hellenism, persecuting far more of them than the Hellenists ever persecuted Christians. Also persecuting more fellow lovers of Christ in Christ’s name, than the Hellenists ever persecuted.

I have posts about Satan, exorcisms (modern & ancient cases), the Christian rise to power, and the trajectory of Gospel miracles how you can see certain stories growing over time.

I also have a post at a blog about Miracles of All Religions and what a mixed bag of evidence they constitute, and how far they are from bearing out the truth of only one religion above all the rest.

Personally, I don’t know what God truly is, or what God truly expects people to believe other than that loving each other can get us further than hating one another.